Author Archives

I'm a philosophy professor at the University of Lethbridge in Southern Alberta, Canada. I specialize in philosophy of war, game theory, contractarianism, and theodicy (the Problem of Evil). I am bald, fat, and ugly, but my wife loves me, so I don't care.

• WELL OF COURSE ACADEMIC FREEDOM IS POLITICAL

  By paulosophicalvimplications on December 27, 2021 • ( 0 )

  The scope of my academic freedom and of your freedom of expression are not coextensive. That is, I can, and regularly do, say all kinds of stupid things in the bar that I would be rightly disciplined for publishing in… Read More ›

• RECOUNTING THE COST

  By paulosophicalvimplications on December 27, 2021 • ( 1 )

  My apologies to my many millions of followers for my having gone silent for over a month now. Such are the wages – well, at least sometimes – of still having a job. But I promise henceforth to put my… Read More ›

• SAFE SPACES (Repost, 26/02/2020)

  By paulosophicalvimplications on October 20, 2021 • ( 3 )

  I’m not sure that academia attracts heresy. Rather I suspect it’s tenure that generates it. In fact since we’re all, by definition, catholic, without the threat of hell – or in our case unemployment – we’d probably all think unclean… Read More ›

• COUNTING THE COST

  By paulosophicalvimplications on October 19, 2021 • ( 19 )

  Front-line workers – in healthcare, in law enforcement, and so on – have every right to refuse to be vaccinated. Their employers – hospitals, police departments, and so on – have every right not to let them on the job-site… Read More ›

• ON HIDING MY WISDOM UNDER A BUSHEL

  By paulosophicalvimplications on October 6, 2021 • ( 7 )

  Unlike my colleagues in the Philosophy Department here at the University of Lethbridge, who are clearly experts in climatology, epidemiology, the pre-contact history of the indigenous peoples of this continent, the list goes on and on … I know nothing… Read More ›

• ANTI-SEMITISM JUST AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE

  By paulosophicalvimplications on October 4, 2021 • ( 2 )

  (In my defence, my son handed me this title and then commanded me to write into it. Hence any liability is entirely his.) Growing up Jewish in western Canada, I regularly felt that I was other, but I can’t ever… Read More ›

• WHY I MUST BE A WHITE SUPREMACIST

  By paulosophicalvimplications on October 1, 2021 • ( 0 )

  I think I must be a white supremacist. Not because I think all lives matter, contrary to what the Black Lives Matter movement thinks I ought not to think. Rather it’s because mattering requires a ‘for whom?’, and I’m highly… Read More ›

• TRISTAN DA CUNHA

  By paulosophicalvimplications on September 22, 2021 • ( 1 )

  In this brave new world of reversing the onus, you’re a racist just in case someone says you are. After all, how can you prove you’re not a racist? In fact to protest your innocence is to confirm your guilt. … Read More ›

• SOME PUZZLES ABOUT SEXUAL ‘INTERFERENCE’

  By paulosophicalvimplications on September 22, 2021 • ( 3 )

  I’d hardly be the first to observe that when a small child falls and scrapes her knee, nine times out of ten she looks to her parent before deciding that it hurts. If the parent doesn’t signal alarm, the child… Read More ›

• HUMOUR

  By paulosophicalvimplications on September 18, 2021 • ( 2 )

  There’s an important difference between twisted and sick. Dead baby jokes are twisted, but telling them at a SIDS funeral is sick. It might relieve the tension in the room, but I’d hold off unless you really know your crowd…. Read More ›